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Last weekend, the White House accidentally exposed the undercover identity of the CIA’s top officer in Afghanistan by including his name on a list provided to thousands of news organizations of senior U.S. officials involved in President Obama’s visit with our troops. The White House tried to put the toothpaste back in the tube once the Washington Post pointed out the mistake.

This is hardly the first time the U.S. government has blown undercover identities, and not just accidentally. Former CIA Director Leon Panetta revealed the name of the Navy SEAL unit ground commander who carried out the Osama bin Laden raid. He did so at a 2011 awards ceremony attended by the filmmaker of “Zero Dark Thirty,” a Hollywood movie that glorified the bin Laden operation and torture, and was widely criticized as agitprop the government helped create. Panetta also disclosed “secret” and “top secret” classified information on the same occasion, facts documented in a long-delayed Pentagon inspector general’s report.